Heh, not likely. We use [SmallMidwesternTown] State Bank, which has exactly one location. It’s nearby and friendly, and – get this – it’s not evil. Isn’t that weird? They don’t charge any weird fees, they don’t tack on an additional fee when you use another bank’s ATM, they give me all the money from checks from my parents immediately and from paychecks the next day… it’s great! Plus I don’t have to tell them how to spell my last name.
I hope so.
Actually, what I hope is that this’ll eventually lead to me becoming a legal resident of Canada and maybe a dual citizen a few years after that. Living on the Mercotan ancestral lands on Lake Michigan is nothing to reject lightly.
I am not a banking expert (unless you want to talk about federal government banking arrangements), but you may be able to set up some sort of direct deposit arrangement. This is pretty easy to set up at the receiving bank end in Canada, but I don’t know how well it works for the paying end. In any case, I think you should be able to do something better than wire transfers, as the US and Canadian banking systems are very closely integrated.
If you try to go the way that others above have mentioned, a bank that apparently deals in Canada and the US (and internationally, I’m led to believe) is HSBC. Of course, my good-for-not-much step-sister told me that, so research on your own.
And to add one more suggestion to the mix you could use www.travelex.com
I use them for my US salary to Czech Koruna conversions. They have all types of ways of getting money from one place to another.
That said, I think a normal ATM card is easiest. elfbabe gets a Canadian bank account, walks up to said bank and uses her USA ATM card to withdraw her monthly alotment, then deposits it in the bank right there. The best exchange rate, the lowest fees- $3? and lots of control.
However, Paypal might work even easier than that, but I forget what charges they have…
IIRC, someone we knew had an analogous situation when his daughter moved to Israel. They found that one fairly efficient way to do so was for her to take out cash advances on her credit card (while he paid the bank in the US to pay off the cash advance).
No clue what fees were involved back then (20ish years ago), I understand most Visa/Mastercards charge cash advance fees these days. Other methods mentioned above may work better / faster / cheaper.
But I thought I’d mention it, as an option in case all else fails.
As a subset of this: she could pay her expenses in Canada using your credit card, then you could just pay off the bill from the US. Wouldn’t give her walking-around money, but at least she could eat.
Oh yeah - from what I’ve heard, you should probably see about having a flag put on the credit card acount along the lines of “Yes, we know this card will see a lot of activity in Canada. Please do not assume this means it’s stolen, and deactivate it w/o telling us!”.
I third PayPal. Of all the ways to transfer money across borders, I find this to be the most economical. Western Union is a ripoff. Bank transfers cost a lot, too.
The other way I would do it is the ATM option. But if you need large chunks of cash at a time, I’d just link a Canadian account and an American amount together through PayPal, and do it that way. Much, much easier.
Well, I work in the banking industry, and I don’t think there’s a way to transfer money from US banks to any foreign banks at no fee. The only way to transfer money into and out of the United States through banks is through what’s called a Fed fund wire, which is what I believe that $30 transfer fee you mentioned is. I’ve seen Fed fund wires running as low as $25, but it’s entirely possible you can find a better price than that somewhere. (Banks often tack on a little… uh… gratuity for themselves, where fees are concerned.)
When you’re using ATM cards abroad—or any credit cards—the credit card company behind the card will add a conversion fee. I’ve never seen this lower than 1% of the transaction amount, and I’ve seen it as high as 3%. The number varies from card to card, based on what the credit card company arranged with each financial institution. Lately I’ve heard talk that apart from the markup that the credit card companies charge, financial institutions are considering adding their own markup in addition, just because they can. When something like this happens, one institution will do it and all others will soon follow. How do they justify it? Ask them and they’ll say, “Well, it brings an additional revenue stream to the company.” Good deal, huh? Sure is… for your financial institution…
To do a Fed fund transfer, you’d have to have a Canadian bank. This would be your only option, even if you’re dealing with the same bank on both sides of the border—like you would with Citibank, as someone has pointed out. Bookkeeper’s suggestion of looking into direct deposit into Canadian banks is worth looking into. I don’t know if you can skirt the Fed fund wire fees that way. You might have to wait a while for a foreign check to clear, though. But this is well out of my purview; you’d do best to talk to a Canadian bank and see if this option would work. Can’t hurt to ask.
Oooh! I have an idea.
You could open your own bank account in Canada (maybe a money market?), stick a bunch of money in it, and then dole it out to your daughter’s Canadian account. Then you only have to pay the $30 transfer when you replenish your Canadian account, and you can keep a reserve in it in case you need to get some “rainy day” money to her fast.
It’s not the payers, but the money recipients that typically get billed the fees in Paypal. Having said that in looking at this Paypal site it appears that PP may charge 2.5% for international transfers that would also involve a currency conversion, but (it appears) would charge nothing if the US dollars are received as US dollars. Possibly then you can then make your best deal with the receiving bank as to what they would charge to convert the currency. If it’s really 2.5% this could be pretty pricey if we’re talking thousands of dollars a month.
Maybe someone with more experience in international transfers could tell you how Paypal is billing it.
Alternatively, you have the Chinese build you a car for Elfbabe (a Rolls Royce works best) with the bodywork made entirely of gold and then…
Well, I checked my last transaction (which was in April) for 8.50 EUR. According to FXHistory website, the interbank rate was 1.287, the cash rate was 1.3384. I was charged $11.23 for the transaction (all fees inclusive), making it a rate of 1.32–which is below the typical cash exchange rate.
Now, this is what I’ve always found from my travels–using my ATM to withdraw funds from an American account was cheaper (counting fees) than exchanging dollars at the local bank. The exchange rate was MUCH better on the ATM, even if you knew which banks or currency exchanges had the best rates.
However, when dealing with 1000s of dollars, I suspect it might be cheaper when all is said and done to wire the funds from an American bank to a Canadian bank, and have the banks deal with each other on the exchange rates.
In looking at the PP site in the case where currency conversions is involved you are quite correct. If we’re talking thousands per month it may actually be cheaper to eat the $ 30. fee QtM mentioned if it’s a flat rate.
Many banks that operate in both the U.S. and Canada are the same in name only. Yeah, there’s a Scotiabank in Manhattan, but I can’t walk in there and use my Canadian Scotiabank ATM card. Same goes for ING Direct and ING USA. Last time I checked (about two years ago) ING wouldn’t link to ING…
You’ll also have problem getting credit in Canada with every company except American Express. elfbabe, if you’re planning to use a credit card in Canada, go out and apply for a U.S. Amex today. Spend every penny you can on that card for two months, then call them up and tell them you need a Canadian dollar account. This will be the fastest way you can build credit north of the border.
As for transfers, I’m usually going the other way, so I have someone with a Cdn dollar account and a U.S. dollar account send me a cheque in the appropriate currency. Canadian banks are very good about clearing cheques (Canada’s about a decade ahead of the U.S. in terms of banking technology) so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I would suggest taking a look at the following TD Canada Trust witch has links to TD Waterhouse Bank in the US. The webbsite does state that they are unable to set up accounts for residents of Canada at this time, but hey, you’re in the States. Try calling the number, and detailing your requirements. Can’t hurt.
I wasn’t charged anything to deposit a US$100 cheque from some American bank (I didn’t pay attention which one) into my Canadian $ bank account (TD Canada Trust) a few weeks ago, so in that sense it is possible to transfer from one to the other without a service charge. However, I didn’t bother to check what exchange rate I was getting, and as someone else mentioned, for large cheques there’d be an issue of having the funds frozen for a significant period (I can’t be bothered finding the period for TD Canada Trust, but for ING Direct it would be 30 days).
I sent off an e-mail to my bank (BMO) asking for the best way to have someone send me money from the US, and they basically said to talk to the US bank about available options. They also said that if it was an international wire transfer, there would be a $14 CDN fee here at the receiving end, in addition to any fees charged by the US bank at that end. I expect any of the other major banks would charge a comparable fee, so this should be calculated in with the $30 US fee at the sending end if you choose this option.
Why not open a dual account in the states. The person who ends up in Canada takes a book of checks. The person in the US drops money in the account and emails the person in Canada on how much. The person in Canada writes themself a check in the amount needed and deposits in the Canada account.
There is still the matter of time it takes to clear but you’d get to know how long that takes after a couple rounds.
This would seem to be adequate for what Qadgop wants. He mentioned “Mrs. Mercotan would like something quicker than mailing a check for her to deposit.” The idea above is quicker. And, in the event of an emergency or such, wire transfer would be a fallback.
